Introducing “Master Plan: The Kingmakers,” from The Lever

0:05Hi, it's Evan Osnos. Today we're bringing you the debut episode of Masterplan's second season. It's called The Kingmakers. Masterplan is the multi-award winning investigative podcast from The Lever, hosted by David Sirota. At a moment when presidential power and the limits of executive authority are at the center of our national conversation, Masterplan The Kingmakers traces the decades-long campaign to concentrate power in the White House. Across the season, it uncovers the legal theories and political battles, court decisions, and powerful figures that steadily weaken the guardrails on executive authority and reveals how their efforts have reshaped the American presidency.

0:44The season premiere takes us back more than 50 years when Richard Nixon challenged Congress's power of the purse and secretly expanded the Vietnam War, fueling fears of what became known as an imperial presidency. Before we play the full episode, follow Masterplan on your favorite podcast app. Now here's the episode.

1:07China's President Xi Jinping watched a huge parade flanked by Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong-un. Myanmar's military authorities are using brutal violence and intimidation to force people to vote. in forthcoming elections. The Pentagon is readying 1 ,500 active-duty soldiers for possible deployment to Minnesota, where President Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act.

1:35David Sirota:China, Russia, North Korea, Myanmar, all led by dictators known for cracking down on their citizens. And then there's, wait, the United States? It's been just over a year since the return of Donald Trump to the White House, and sending armed federal agents into American cities is just one item in a long laundry list of increasingly authoritarian moves. President Trump has overseen America's largest military parade in decades. Trump's actions have put the K-word on the tip of many Americans' tongues. And I don't mean K-pop. I mean king. We don't serve a king. Honey, you serve the people. You are not a king.

2:16You will never be a king. No Kings means that it's government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

2:22David Sirota:Now that word king has often been thrown around as a compliment. You're the best, man. You are the king. But when it comes to American democracy, king is a dirty word, describing a president that many believe is out of control. He feels like he's, you know, he's a king. He can do whatever he wants. And that's just not how America runs. During the No Kings protests, millions of Americans flooded into the streets to express their genuine fear that the president is literally trying to become a king. You know, this country is a democracy, so I feel like Donald Trump is trying to be a dictator. That's what we have our declaration for, so we don't have kings anymore.

3:04David Sirota:And their concern is valid. People are truly worried about a king or a dictator because Donald Trump has spent the last year acting like one. Under the Trump administration, you will pay a tariff. We have hit hundreds of targets in Iran. Venezuela. Los Angeles. Chicago. Minnesota. If we go to Portland, we're going to wipe them out. Have some of these raids gone too far? No, I think they haven't gone far enough. We're getting rid of programs that we didn't like. In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote. Now, it may be comforting to tell yourself that this is all new and sudden and just the product of a reality TV star president and a historically shitty opposition party.

3:48David Sirota:But I have some bad news for you. This isn't new at all, and it's not an anomaly. This is more of a culmination, or really a well-planned coronation, that's been a very long time in the making. You see, what Donald Trump is doing is part of something way bigger than Donald Trump, something that's been gaining traction in recent decades. It has a specific name. Unitary executive. Unitary executive. This unitary executive theory. But when we asked people about it at the No Kings protests, Have you heard of anything called the unitary executive theory? the answers were pretty consistent. Haven't heard that term before.

4:29Unitary executive theory? No.

4:31David Sirota:Never. The unitary executive theory. That's the technical legal term for the carefully sculpted plan to give the president limitless power to do whatever he wants. It's a key part of a master plan to subvert democracy. Season one of this podcast uncovered one part of that plan, the plot to legalize corruption so that public policy would not reflect what most people want. It would reflect what big money wants. In this season, we reveal another part of that master plan. We expose the master planners, or really the would-be kingmakers, whose unitary executive theory is designed to turn the president into a king so that he and his minions and his donors can do whatever they want, regardless of any other democratic check on his power.

5:20David Sirota:And don't take my word for it. These master planners are now just saying it right out loud. I have the right to do whatever I want as president. Now, you may be thinking, what's the big deal here? Sure, some people may not like what Trump is doing, but he did win an election. He's just using his power to do what he promised. And if folks don't like that, then maybe the problem isn't kings. It's that America just needs to elect a better, nicer king. Maybe like James Earl Jones in the movie Coming to America. I'm King Joffrey Joffrey, ruler of Zamunda. Or James Earl Jones in The Lion King? A king's time as ruler rises and falls like the sun.

5:59David Sirota:But here's the problem. For every mythical, nice King Joffrey Joffre, there's a very good chance you'll get a King Joffrey instead. Sir Illyn, bring me his head. Two centuries before HBO's Game of Thrones, America's founders seemed to understand this axiom. They seemed to understand that things tend to go wrong when a society gives all the power to one person. You know, like Mad King George III. I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love. That's one of the reasons those founders wrote a constitution chock full of checks and balances. But over the last 50 years, those checks and balances have been weakened.

6:48David Sirota:And that started well before Donald Trump was ever on the national political scene. When the president does it, it is not illegal. I'm the decider and I decide what is best. Where they won't act, I will. In this season of Master Plan, we're going to reveal the hidden history that happened right under our noses, from legislative throwdowns to international scandals to the rise of the surveillance state. We'll uncover obscure memos and courtroom arguments, unearth long-forgotten tapes, and parse a 40-year-old best-selling manifesto, all of which, when pieced together, have created a Frankenstein-esque monster of executive power.

7:25It's alive!

7:27David Sirota:In the process of telling this tale, we're going to reveal how a country based on the rejection of kings ended up with a presidency on the verge of obtaining absolute power, regardless of what the law says and what the rest of us need. And like season one, this saga starts with cold, hard cash. And specifically, who gets the power to decide how that cash is spent? I'm David Sirota. Welcome to Season 2 of Masterplan, The Kingmakers.

8:29The White House Budget Office has ordered all federal agencies to cease any financial assistance.

8:35David Sirota:Just eight days after being inaugurated in front of a room full of billionaires, Donald Trump did something that seemed unprecedented. It may be the most far-reaching executive action this White House has taken yet. hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending on everything from assistants to farmers to head This was money Congress had already legislated and that's very important. You see the Constitution is really clear like crazy explicitly clear that Congress gets to decide how taxpayer money is spent It's the so-called power of the purse that you maybe learned about in high school civics class the power that the founders gave to Congress so that the president wouldn't become another King George.

9:22David Sirota:So this Trump move to grab the power of the purse, yeah, it definitely seemed unprecedented. Except it wasn't. Donald Trump was reprising a role. He was merely the new leading man in a reboot of an old movie franchise. Here we go again. Again. In this case, Trump is the shitty sequel of another president, the peak master planner from season one, the one with the jowls from California, the man who insisted, I'm not a crook. Yep, we're talking about Richard Milhouse Nixon. In 1968, Nixon won his election with support from what was billed as the silent majority, the Americans who felt alienated by the upheaval of the 1960s.

10:08David Sirota:In a speech that Nixon gave shortly before the election, he made it clear that he would be a firm hand on America's tiller. The days of a passing presidency belong to a simple past. Let me be very clear about this. The next president must take an activist view of his office. And soon after Nixon won that election in 1968, he started a spending fight that looks like a roadmap for the future we're now living in. And roadmap is actually a perfect metaphor because that's where our story about the power of the purse is going, to a road in Missouri in 1970. Picture this. It's summer. You've packed up your brand new wood-paneled Ford LTD Country Squire station wagon, and you're on a cross-country road trip, a family vacation through the show-me stage.

10:57Hey, hey, see that, kids? That's the St. Louis Arch, the gateway to the West.

11:02David Sirota:There are snacks and Cokes in the cooler. The kids are crammed in the backseat. Dad, what river is this? Ah, that's the Mississippi. The mighty Mississippi. The old miss. The old man. You're cruising along the smooth pavement of Interstate 44. You're singing dumb road trip songs to pass the time. Deep river. But then... Clark, I think this is the wrong exit. Wait, where did the interstate go? Why are all those other roads also unfinished? Are we lost? I saw some detour signs. Audrey, when they close the road, they put up big signs like this one. Okay, okay. So while I can't prove that this exact scenario happened, the car, the kids, the snacks, the crash, we do know that in 1970, construction on I-44 through St.

11:53David Sirota:Louis had stalled out because when Missouri asked for the money that Congress had allocated to finish the road, Richard Nixon said no as part of his State of the Union pledge to slash government spending. Now, millions of Americans are forced to go into debt today because the federal government decided to go into debt yesterday. We must balance our federal budget so that American families will have a better chance to balance their family budget. So despite the fact that Congress had already legislated money for these programs, including Missouri's highways, Richard Nixon withheld the funds. Again, this is a huge deal, and not just for Missouri.

12:35David Sirota:Think of it this way. You order something on Amazon, something you absolutely need, like a mounted singing fish or a LeBouBou doll. Your credit card clears. The confirmation email arrives in your inbox. You've got mail. And then you get a note from Amazon saying that they're actually not going to send you the stuff that you just ordered. They have it in stock. You've paid for it. But Amazon thinks that money could be better used elsewhere, so you can't have the fish or the doll. And they're not going to refund your money either. They're just going to hold on to it until they decide that what you're spending it on is appropriate.

13:14David Sirota:That's kind of what happened to Missouri. Congress ordered resources for a road, the state began construction, and then Richard Nixon decided not to deliver the rest of what Congress had promised Missouri. Nixon was trying to do this thing called impoundment, which is a technical term for a president blocking the release of money that federal law requires him to spend. Put another way, Nixon was refusing to follow the spending legislation already passed by congressional lawmakers. Article one of the Constitution says that they're the ones who decide how much money to spend and on what. This is historian Rick Pearlstein, author of the book Nixonland.

13:53Richard Nixon did what other presidents, again, had done before him, but to a much greater degree. In which he said, I'm just going to not spend the money. I'm going to make this decision myself.

14:04David Sirota:Remember, Congress is supposed to have the power of the purse. They're supposed to decide where the federal government's money is spent. And that's not some small footnote of the Constitution. It's in Article 1, one of the first things the founders wanted to make clear. because they understood that spending power is the real power. And one guy doesn't get to decide that for the rest of us. And the president gets the discretion of administering that money, but not deciding how much. Now, Missouri likely didn't care which branch was in charge or making spending decisions. The state just wanted its damn money so it could finish its roads.

14:47I want my$2!

14:48David Sirota:So in August 1970, Missouri filed a lawsuit against the Nixon administration on behalf of all state highway agencies. It was the opening salvo in a flurry of lawsuits against so-called impoundment. But even though Article 1 of the Constitution is really clear about Congress having the power of the purse, Richard Nixon insisted that impounding funds was his constitutional right. He also insisted that he could levy tariffs. Along with the power of the purse, Article 1 says that Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes and duties. But in 1971, Richard Nixon chose to ignore that too.

15:31I am today imposing an additional tax of 10 % on goods imported into the United States.

15:39David Sirota:Citing an economic emergency, Nixon used a 1917 law which had originally been aimed at the Germans during World War I. He appeared to have no qualms about bypassing Congress yet again. In case you didn't get that, that's Nixon saying the import duty delights him. It did not, however, delight America's trading partners who filed a lawsuit. But Nixon didn't care. Emboldened by his 1972 re-election victory, bought with the bags of illegal campaign cash that we talked about in season one, Nixon made the audacious argument in 1973 that he could basically do whatever he wanted. The constitutional right for the president of the United States to impound funds, and that is not to spend money, when the spending of money would mean either increasing prices or increasing taxes for all the people, that right is absolutely clear.

16:36David Sirota:Nixon argued that his job was to balance the budget for the American people, which meant he could rein in spending as he saw fit. If the legislative branch was what Nixon's White House called a credit card Congress, he, Richard Nixon alone, was cutting those cards up. Congress got word today on another White House economy move. the president served formal notice that he is withholding a total of$8.7 billion in assorted appropriated funds on grounds the money cannot be properly spent at present. Congressional lawmakers in both parties were not pleased. Senator Ted Kennedy might have said it best.

17:12They reflect a royal view of presidential prerogatives, which seems arrogantly to relegate the legislative branch to a position of inferiority.

17:21David Sirota:Both the House and Senate pushed back in April 1973 with legislation that made it abundantly clear, above and beyond what was in the Constitution, that the president could not impound funds. The measures were bipartisan, sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans. Let's just take a second here and imagine seeing that kind of action from Congress right now. Ah, wouldn't that be nice? Bookmark this moment. We'll be coming back to Congress's money battle with Richard Nixon after we take a little detour. Hey, Captain Willard, where are we headed? We're going upriver about 75 clicks above the Dolong Bridge.

17:59David Sirota:But that's Cambodia, Captain. That's classified. Not anymore. That's coming up after the break. We're not supposed to be in Cambodia, but that's where I'm going. Around the time that Richard Nixon was first trying to usurp Congress's power of the purse in that Missouri road squabble, he was also usurping the other power that the founders had given exclusively to Congress, the power to declare war. Specifically, Nixon was secretly expanding the Vietnam War into Cambodia, despite having won the White House on this promise. I pledge to you, we shall have an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. Congress had authorized the Vietnam War with the infamous 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was based on false pretenses.

18:48David Sirota:It was one of the first modern examples of a government lying its way into a war. What's that thing that Matthew McConaughey says in True Detective? Time is a flat circle. You can go watch an 18-hour Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam to learn about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The point here is that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Richard Nixon absolutely was not ending the Vietnam War, and he was not remaining within the confines of the resolution that Congress had passed. Nixon was doing the opposite. He was actually expanding the war. Inklings of this started trickling out in May 1969 when a New York Times article exposed actions carried out during Operation Menu, a secret carpet bombing campaign in Cambodia.

19:37David Sirota:The story didn't get much notice. Less than a year later, on April 20th, 1970, Nixon insisted that he was ending the war. I am therefore tonight announcing plans for the withdrawal of an additional 150 ,000 American troops to be completed during the spring of next year. But then, a mere 10 days later, came the betrayal and the power grab. In a White House address, Nixon announced that he was officially expanding the Vietnam War into Cambodia. And he was doing so without any new authorization from Congress. We take this action not for the purpose of expanding the war into Cambodia, but for the purpose of ending the war in Vietnam and winning the just peace we all desire.

20:26David Sirota:Despite the Constitution, Nixon was telling America what he was doing. He was not asking Congress for approval. And members of Congress from both parties were pissed. Here's Republican Senator Jacob Javits the day after Nixon's speech. I think the Congress will seriously consider what measures it ought to take in respects of restraints on expenditure or in some other way to assert its responsibility equally with that of the president. That same day, the ire was echoed by the public. As Javits and other congressional leaders criticized Nixon, the anti-war movement intensified, kicking off the largest demonstrations so far.

21:12David Sirota:Thousands of people marched in Washington, D.C., and nationwide, university students staged massive strikes. Earlier in the day, the trouble began on campus after a rally to protest the U.S. involvement in Cambodia. Students went to the university armory and ransacked it. They broke furniture and burned uniforms. And then three days later, on May 4, 1970, National Guardsmen fired on anti-war demonstrators at Kent State in Ohio, killing four students. Have we come to such a state in this country that a young girl has to be shot because she disagrees deeply with the actions of her government? I want my daughter's death.

21:52and those of the other three children, as well as the wounded, not be in vain.

22:00David Sirota:In response to the violence, the protest movement went into overdrive. Campuses closed all over the country. 100 ,000 people marched in Washington, D.C. Under intense pressure, Congress made an initial move to rein Nixon in. The Senate voted overwhelmingly today to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. the Legislative Act used to justify the step up of the war in Vietnam. That repeal was significant, but mostly symbolic. It did not deter Nixon from continuing the war. It would be two more years before Congress knew the full extent of Nixon's unauthorized war in Cambodia. In 1972, a former Air Force major named Hal Knight sent a letter to a Democratic senator named William Proxmire.